Learn English – Meaning of ‘get up the juice’

meaning

This expression is from a book Eat, Pray,Love by a writer Elizabeth Gilbert.
I try to guess the meaning but still don't know.
Below is the situation the writer is standing at her house's door with her friend, expecting him to kiss her.

This is an improvement; for the first few weeks, he would only shake my hand. I think if I were to stay in Italy for another three years, he might actually get up the juice and kiss me.

Best Answer

I think get up the juice in this context (he might actually get up the juice and kiss me) alludes to a more common idiom: get up the courage/nerve, and this juice is used in the sense of "courage" or "nerve"; so the whole clause would mean "he might actually get enough courage and kiss me".

Related definitions given by The Free Dictionary:

get up something also get something up
to emotionally prepare yourself to do something I finally got up the courage to let her read some of my poetry.

get enough nerve up (redirected from get the nerve up)
get enough nerve up (to do something) and get enough courage up (to do something); get enough guts up (to do something); get enough pluck up (to do something); get enough spunk up (to do something); get the nerve up (to do something); get the courage up (to do something); get the guts up (to do something); get the pluck up (to do something); get the spunk up (to do something)
Fig. to work up enough courage to do something. I hope I can get enough nerve up to ask her for her autograph. I wanted to do it, but I couldn't get up enough nerve. I thought he would never get up the courage to ask me for a date.

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